When you want to store PHP data structures in a database or network request you use serialize/unserialize to convert and restore the data. Below is an example:

<pre>
&lt;?php
$data_string = serialize(array(1, 'a string', 'another string'));
echo $data_string . '\n';

$data = unserialize($data_string);
var_dump($data);
?>
</pre>

Test unserialize online using a site like <a href="http://unserialize.com">unserialize.com</a>
